Album review: Bowling For Soup: 'Sorry For Partyin''

BOWLING FOR SOUP: 'Sorry For Partyin'' (Jive)

The popular consensus about Bowling For Soup is that they're a bit of a one-trick pony; a band stuck perpetually in adolescence, forever making wise-cracks about their personal ineptitude, but never delving any deeper, never daring to peel away the mask created by their penchant for humour. Such a notion is complete nonsense, of course, as it presupposes that there's something less artistic and less worthwhile about making people laugh; but why should there be? Why should it be any more meritable to write allegorical lyrics than comedic ones? Why are we embarrassed by the fact that Bowling For Soup generally manage to do what their remit (as outlined on 2007's 'I'm Gay!') says: 'make [us all] feel better on a really shitty day?' Such an achievement is admirable, not risible, and sure, their music may be bog-standard, three-note pop punk, and their albums might all sound exactly the same, but admit it, every time they worm their way onto your stereo, a great big smile runs rampant all over your face.

So yes, 'Sorry For Partyin' WILL make you laugh your socks off. There are the usual pointed snipes at the musical Zeitgeist: 'I Gotchoo' tries its hand at a sort of Kid Rock-esque fusion of country, hip hop and rock and ends up quoting the Fuzzy Bear song, while 'A Really Cool Dance Song' takes the same approach as 'Punk Rock 101' in its rip on the current popularity of electronica, littering the track with the various trappings and conventions of the genre and admitting to the listener (or rather, pretending) that it's the band's attempt at having a number one hit. The utterly shameless chorus - 'this song sounds like a dance song/Cos dance songs are cool now/So shake what your momma gave ya' - is just genius, but even this is topped in the final thirty seconds when the track falls apart because the drum machine stops working, leading Jaret to admit that 'it doesn't sound good anymore.' There are several rather more crass moments too: lead single 'My Wena' takes a thinly-disguised metaphor and runs a marathon with it (a woman called Wena? Who cries herself to sleep at night? Hur hur), while 'Hooray For Beer' is just plain ridiculous, a three minute paen to the delights of alcohol, delivered in the kind of overly verbose language usually reserved for love letters. It's this sort of linguistic playfulness that allows the band to get away with being purile, because they rarely lapse into cliche and when they do, it's designed to be ironic.

It's also worth pointing out that, for all their supposed immaturity, there's actually a poignant emotional core to many of the tracks on offer here. Bowling For Soup often wear their hearts on their yellow polka-dot sleeves: for all 'Only Young' seems to be a bit of a mickey-take of contempo pop punk bands like Boys Like Girls, with its over-abundance of keyboards and sacharrine lyrics about staying sixteen forever, the message is still fairly endearing. 'I Don't Wish You Were Dead Anymore', meanwhile, derives its comedy from its bluntness, but the song remains heartfelt - the kind of thing you might say to your ex if you were forced to tell the truth. And then there's 'BFFF', probably the best moment on the whole record, in which Jaret delivers a laugh-out-loud celebration of the joys of bromance. It's effortlessly sweet, giving a series of amusing anecdotes ('I accidentally chopped your finger off your writing hand, oh well/Now you get disability' etc.), before crescendoing with a brilliant tell-all chorus of 'I'm just trying to say I love you in a heterosexual way.' This is Bowling For Soup's power: to have you simultaneously rolling around on the floor in hysterics, and celebrating the beauty and absurdity of the everyday minutiae of existence.

Most critics will probably write off 'Sorry For Partyin' as a record with little artistic merit and shame on them. Sure, this isn't the most intellectually fulfilling or emotionally complex album of the decade, but it doesn't have to be. Writing good comedy is one of the hardest literary tasks there is, and the fact that Bowling For Soup are able to make you laugh out loud so many times over the course of forty minutes just demonstrates the depth of their skill. We need no further justification for their existence than that they make us feel so much better... so guys, don't be sorry for partyin', it freakin' rocks, man. (7/10)